music streaming
Amazon Music to overtake Pandora as No. 2 US music streamer this year
According to estimates from Insider Intelligence (previously eMarketer), Amazon Music will surpass Pandora this year to become the music streamer with the second most number of users in the U.S.…
Mdundo eyes more telco partnerships after music streaming revenue growth from Tanzania, Nigeria deals
Mdundo, an Africa-focused music streaming service, is banking on more partnerships with telcos across the continent to grow its earnings and user base. Last year, the company signed deals with…
Spotify CEO hints HiFi tier delay is related to licensing issues
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has hinted that the delay of the streaming service’s HiFi subscription tier is related to licensing issues. Speaking to analysts and investors during Spotify’s quarterly and…
Tinder is partnering with Spotify to launch a new ‘Music Mode’ feature
Tinder is partnering with Spotify to launch a new “Music Mode” feature where users will hear a 30-second looped preview of a potential match’s chosen song while checking out their…
UK’s antitrust regulator to probe music streaming market
The UK’s antitrust watchdog will take a close look at the music streaming market. Today the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it will be conducting a market study…
Social listening app Earbuds raises $3 million in Series A funding
Most startup origin stories don’t begin on an NFL field, but that’s where founder, CEO and offensive tackle Jason Fox conceptualized the idea behind Earbuds. As he watched first overall…
Turntable.fm competitor tt.fm launches beta app for iOS and Android
You’d be forgiven for being confused. I’ve been following this story and am currently writing it and I’m still fairly confused. But Turntable (or tt.fm), not to be confused with…
Amazon makes its lossless music streaming service a free upgrade
On the heels of this morning’s announcement of Apple’s next-generation music service featuring lossless audio and spatial audio with support for Dolby Atmos, Amazon is making a move likely aimed…
Square buys majority of Tidal, adds Jay-Z to its board in bid to shake up the artist economy
This morning Square, a fintech company that serves both individuals and companies, announced that it has purchased a majority stake in Tidal, a music streaming service. The deal, worth some…
Alibaba shuts down 12-year-old music streaming app Xiami
Using Xiami was once synonymous with having good music taste in China. The music app, which debuted around 2008 and was acquired by Alibaba in 2013, is discontinuing its streaming…
Spotify Kids app rolls out blocking, listening history features for parents
Spotify is expanding the capabilities of its parental controls on its Spotify Kids app, aimed at children ages 3 and up on a parent’s Spotify Premium Family plan. Before, parents…
Resso, ByteDance’s music streaming app, officially launches in India, sans Tencent-backed Universal Music
TikTok, the hugely popular social media app, found a lot of early traction by giving users a way to create funny lip-synced versions of clips from well-known songs and then…
TikTok inks licensing deal with Merlin to use music from independent labels in videos and new Resso streaming service
TikTok, the fast-growing user-generated video app from China’s ByteDance, has been building a new music streaming service to compete against the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. And…
Spotify’s free music service will now stream on Alexa devices, plus Bose and Sonos smart speakers
Spotify has worked with Amazon Echo since 2016, but only for premium subscribers. Today, that changes as Spotify says its free tier will now stream across Alexa-powered devices, as well…
Featured Article
Meet SoundCloud rival Audius, free & anti-takedowns
“It was SoundCloud’s opportunity to lose and now it’s ours,” says Audius CEO Roneil Rumburg. Plenty of musicians and fans are sick of SoundCloud’s expensive hosting costs, haphazard content takedowns and lagging user experience as the site’s status withers. Audius wants to be the opposite, and offer a new home for artists where they’ll eventually…
Pandora today is launching a desktop app for Windows users following its debut of a native Mac app earlier this year. On Mac, Pandora offers a variety of features for…
Nielsen reports a record half a trillion on-demand music streams in U.S. so far this year
Music streaming services have already delivered a new high of half a trillion (507.7 billion) on-demand streams in the first half of 2019, according to Nielsen’s mid-year Music Report released…
Boomplay, a Spotify-style music and video streaming service for African music and Africa, raises $20M
While Spotify dukes it out with Apple and other big tech names to target high-end users in mostly developed markets, a startup out of China has raised some money to…
We live in the subscription streaming era of media. Across film, TV, music, and audiobooks, subscription streaming platforms now shape the market. Gaming and podcasting could be next. Where are…
BBC wants to add 3rd parties to its Sounds app to balance Apple and Spotify dominance in podcasts and music
Earlier this week, the BBC pulled its podcasts from Google’s Podcast app and Assistant platform after determining that it wasn’t getting enough out of the relationship, specifically noting that Google wasn’t…
Spotify just started selling a new subscription in Ireland called Premium Duo, as The Verge spotted. You guessed it, this subscription tier is designed for couples, roommates and all combinations…
Social music app Playlist lets you listen to music with others in real time
A new app called Playlist aims to make music a more social experience than what’s offered today by the major music platforms like Apple Music, Pandora or Spotify, for example.…
Here’s why Spotify will go public via direct listing on April 3rd
Spotify explained why it’s ditching the traditional IPO for a direct listing on the NYSE on April 3rd today during its Investor Day presentation. With no lockup period and no intermediary…
Amazon launches its Prime Music service in India
Amazon has quietly launched its Prime Music service in India today. The retailer brought its Prime service to India some 18 months ago, but at the time it was lacking…
Pandora is laying off about 5 percent of its workforce as it shifts to more automated ads
Streaming music service Pandora is laying off about five percent of its employee base and taking “other cost-saving measures” in an attempt to save about $45 million annually. According to…
Spotify expands merch to beauty products, sells out tickets for Who We Be
Spotify, the $16 billion digital music “startup” that is hotly tipped for an IPO, continues to lay the groundwork to diversify its platform beyond basic streaming. In the latest development,…
Music rights collection startup Kobalt adds another $14M at $789M valuation, Bill Maris joins board
When he was still at Google Ventures, Bill Maris led a round of funding into music royalty collecting startup Kobalt, to make one of the VC arms bigger bets in…
Amazon this morning announced a new feature for its Echo devices called “multi-room music,” which allows owners with more than one Echo to control where their music is played, or…
Alexa can now find and play music with over 500 ‘activity phrases’
Alexa’s ability to help you find the right music got a boost this week. The virtual assistant is now able to pull up music for a wide range of activities…
Pandora CEO Tim Westergren is officially out amid company shakeup
Following rumblings of a shakeup over the weekend, Pandora confirmed today that co-founder Tim Westergren is stepping down from his role as CEO. Naveen Chopra, who stepped in as the…
